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Some of you may not know that in addition to my admin responsibility at
GNU-Darwin, I am a biochemist and protein crystallographer, as well as
the X-ray lab manager and systems admin for the Biophysics and
Biophysical Chemistry Department at Johns Hopkins University. Here are
some Hopkins links.

Google and others have just proposed that DNS be extended. If DNS is
going to be changed in such a minor way, why not do something much more
useful and interesting, which has a fully-functioning implementation
already in prevalent use for over fifteen years on millions of free
software systems? Why not make the DNS protocol a true
server-independent peer-to-peer Naming Service? In combination with the
modern DNSSEC extensions, many of the complaints associated with the
current peer-to-peer free software implementation would vanish.

In applying for jobs and contract opportunities, the first hurdle is the
request for a CV in a proprietary document format. ASCII text, the
utmost basic of file formats, defeats many stupid employers and recruitment
agencies. Whilst this is useful to help weed out working for companies
with stupid people in them, it doesn't help in actually getting work.

The approach which has actually had far greater success, however, in
getting companies to change their policy of using proprietary document
formats is to explain clearly that the "online application form"
contravenes "Equal Opportunities" legislation. This article describes
the approaches taken and the success stories, one at a time, by which
the proprietary document format practices have been successfully
changed.

This year I needed to do a project in a language that is both old and
notable but still understood as unusual and exotic: Eiffel. I did not
know Eiffel in the past and needed to learn it very quickly to do my
task. Hence this article is not about Eiffel itself, it ist about a
newcomers impression about Eiffel. I will be writing about the "classic"
Eiffel with EiffelStudio, not about SmartEiffel and other interesting
clones that surely also deserve a lot of attention.

Advogato.org is officially 10
years old. Raph made the first Advogato
diary post on Nov 5, 1999 and the first article was
posted on Nov 6, 1999. Ten years may not seem like much, but it's a long
time in Internet years. Not many blogging or social networking sites can
claim to be that old. Happy Birthday!

This is the first of a series of essays I will publish
here and elsewhere, in an effort to solve what I regard as some
fundamental problems that are endemic to the computer
industry.

I have felt called to my Duty several times in my career. I have
never regretted performing it, but doing so has been a heavy burden, as
it always came at great cost. This is one of those times - I will
explain in the next essay I publish just why.

November 1, 2005

My father
Charless Russell Crawford was an engineer too, an electrical
engineer. Once a carpenter,
he was inspired to enlist in the Navy
one snowy evening while roofing a house, when he struck his thumb real
hard with a hammer. The Navy sensed my father's
potential for leadership and sent him to study at the University of Idaho,
where he met my mother Patricia Ann Speelmon. My sister was born while
they were still students. After graduation,
he went on to Officer Candidate School and was given his commission. The
telegram with news of my birth took two weeks to
reach him: he was deep in the Phillipine jungle getting trained in
survival, as the Vietnam War was just then
heating up: the year was 1964. My father's engineering specialty was
antiaircraft missile
electronics: guidance and control systems.

The lesson my father taught me, a lesson I only now, as I
speak, realize for the first time I was
ever taught, is to Do My Duty. You already know
my father did his for his country. I want
you to know that he did his duty to his family as a husband, father and
provider, and he did it well.
He did his duty as a teacher too: I learned science and engineering at
my father's knee, as we worked on projects
together. Once we had a contest to see who could make a working
telephone from stuff found lying around the house.

Engineers have other Masters who demand duty of us: our profession,
our conscience, those who invest in,
purchase or use what we design, our coworkers, and the public.

Listen to me carefully, and never forget what I'm
about to say. I want all of you to spend
some time thinking it over deeply, then I want you to discuss it among
yourselves:

The Internet is a tool to connect people, to empower them to
share information and knowledge. Through increased communication,
one person's contribution becomes everyone's gain. Through the
power of collaboration, many minds can achieve what one person
alone could not. It sounds like either a recipe for a Utopia
or for a nightmare, which starkly reminds us that with great
power comes great responsibility. And it's our right to be
given the choice, to take advantage of the opportunity that the
Internet represents. But there is something happening to the
"InterWeb": the tracks are being ripped up. Mandelson in the UK.
"3 Strikes" in France. Fascist Censorship in Australia. Phorm.
Net Neutrality. The Pirate Bay attacks. The RIAA. The DMCA.
There's a recurring and accelerating theme of attacks, which have
accelerated over the past ten years, to attempt to control what can
and cannot be done with the Internet, that is beginning to blur with
Science Fiction predictions from well-renowed authors. The question
is: why? What's the driving force, and what motivates these attacks,
when, mathematically and statistically, they are simply impossible,
leaving an alienated populace feeling threatened by and distrusting
their Governments, just like in China, Iran and other "Regimes"
which we believe that we are "better than"?

In relation to the Wikipedia applet proposal, I am currently moving
through the web in the hopeless search of some FOSS project that would
show at least weak interest in scanning of Java source code for bad
intents. One of the huge advantages Wikipedia or other public server
could provide is that we have the applet sources and can compile on a
server side. Among other things this allows to strip the signature
easily, maybe we could do more.

floggerasks
on slashdot what sci-fi stories are recommended for reading as part
of a teaching class about sci-fi. As
I've read over 500 sci-fi and fantasy books, and own over 300, I've
written up some of the best. Covering history, politics and the best
and worst of human nature, science fiction's freedom opens doors which
remain firmly closed to traditional fiction. It just has to be done
well enough to be believable.
(updated 7oct2009 with fantasy list)